[ChuckMcM]

Technically true, there is an interesting book you might want to read titled, "Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much" (http://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much/dp/0...). Its central theme is that scarcity changes the value calculus of our decision making process, and it isn't just about money, it can be making poor choices when you don't think you have enough time for example.

In order to choose not to speed, once speeding is inevitable because of a lack of time, the woman in the article has to accept the consequence of being late (forced) or the consequence of getting a ticket (probabilistic), and she (and most people) choose the risk choice rather than the 'forced' choice. The correct answer is to wind that transaction back to what she was doing before she was late, and finding the places where she ended up with not enough time, and those are then filled with a series of what appear to be inconsequential choices with respect to time vs time availability.

I found it a fascinating read, and it gave me quite a different perspective on problems like these where the 'obvious' answer seems to be "if it hurts, then stop doing that."

[thaumaturgy]

I've not read that book, but there's another factor common in poverty, especially among those living in poverty who are trying to get out of it: extreme stress.

Working your way out of poverty demands superhuman levels of energy and willpower. You have to juggle multiple jobs, each with their own schedule and you have to be able to float through crises. The plumbing failed in your run-down apartment again? Well, it's not like you can call in sick today, you don't have the kind of job that affords you the luxury of taking time off.

When you have kids, it's even more severe. Kids need things all the time: food, school supplies, clothes, attention. They get sick. They need to be supervised at all times.

So you got off work late and you're trying to pick up your kids, who've been waiting at school for 20 minutes already, and you're still hoping to make it to the first half of your class so that you can get the education you need that might help you get out of this whole cycle. You know that eventually a school official is going to complain about leaving your kids outside. What do they care? Your kids aren't their problem. You've already dealt with people from the school before, you don't need another problem with them.

Every minute counts. But now you're stuck at a red light and you know how this cycle works. You drive it every day. If you hit this light while it's red and the next light is green, you'll be stuck at a red light in every single intersection between here and the school.

If only.

If only you had left 30 seconds earlier, you could've avoided the red lights.

If only you had driven just a little faster, you could've avoided the red lights.

If only you had pulled out ahead of that slow senior sedan, you might've avoided the red lights.

While you're sitting there, at the red light, staring at an empty intersection because this light is on a timer and there's no cross traffic, the seconds tick by like minutes.

Your kids are waiting, still.

And you're afraid, too. What if the school official wants to reprimand you? What if they want to argue? You don't have the time. What if that creepy kid is hanging out with your kids right now? Drugs are everywhere, it's hard to keep them away. What if a patrol car drove by and noticed your kids standing outside?

What if, what if, what if. Every second.

--

It's a piece of cake to sit back and analyze this situation from afar: yeah, sure, speeding only saves you 10 seconds on average in a small town. Maybe a minute here or there depending on where you are. It's not worth the safety risk to yourself or others. It's not worth the ticket.

But I don't believe anyone is completely immune to sacrificing their principles or reason in all situations. Live a stressful enough life where every minute counts, and you too will start trading the risk of a traffic ticket for the reward of one extra minute.

[brudgers]

before she was late

For a poor single mother holding a job with few or no benefits and with a support network often consisting of people in worse circumstances, that time may have been back in the heady days of 2005 or 2006.

One might say, some people are born into lateness.

[ChuckMcM]

I disagree. I have some of the same issues as the single mom profiled here, and reading the book helped me connect the dots. Having less of something than is required to meet all of the requirements for that something (the definition of scarcity) triggers this behavior in people. And if you don't actually stop and think about what is happening, you start making choices which are counter productive to your situation.

If you've read the Seven Habits of Highly Successful people one of their points is to invest time to work on 'important' but not 'urgent' things. They argue that by doing so these things do not contribute to 'urgency' later by becoming a crisis. They back into the same, rather powerful concept. Which is that if you don't take time to externalize all the 'costs' you don't effectively manage the resource. In my case I would get a free hour of time and think I could do "anything" with it, but once I started keeping track of things I had put off in my notebook I started recognizing where I'd spend that hour doing something unrelated to the stuff being put off and later that activity was going to be 'urgent' if it didn't get done. By choosing instead to put that hour toward one of my projects needing time I keep them under the crisis threshold. I also recognized things I really wasn't ever going to get to and got rid of those projects entirely from my 'queue.'

It can be challenging to realize that you can only do one thing tonight even though three things are vying for your attention, and pulling an all-nighter (my go to trick for college) really taints the hours you spend on projects the next day, which then take more time than they would have, which means even more things vying for your attention. You have to 'back up' to before that point where you are over loaded and understand what you can really get done in that time and then prioritize based on overall progress against the goals. Relatively easy to say, really hard to do.